What is interesting though is the shear amount of information that people display about themselves on their Facebook pages. Names, locations, birthdates, religious beliefs, who your married to or currently dating. We share photos, stories and information with hundreds of people every day – and in many cases we actually know very little about the people that we are sharing this private information with.

It’s like a stranger arriving at your door, and asking you for your name, date of birth, photos of your kids, and a few other personal details! I’m not sure about you but if a stranger knocked on my door, they get approximately 2 seconds to give me good reason to keep the door open before I slam it! So what’s different with Facebook?

In an age of identity theft we have never been so open with our information – that is one of the disadvantages of the Internet!

So if you are a facebook user, then stop, and look at what you are sharing – and more importantly who you are sharing it with!

Here are my top tips to start protecting yourself within Facebook.

1. Hide your year of birth.

Displaying your year of birth to all is pretty dangerous in my opinion – not just because to tells everyone exactly how old you are; but it’s also a good security question that you would normally be asked, and sometimes incorporated into people passwords. Not showing it also helps to protect yourself against identity fraud – and let’s face it Facebook is the identify thieves’ greatest tool if they want to know anything about you!

How: On your facebook profile, click on the ‘Info’ tab and then select ‘Edit Information’ and then under ‘Basic Information’ change the option to either, “Don’t show my birthday in my profile” or “Show only day and month in my Profile”.

2. Maintain a ‘’Private Life’!

Just remember that anything that you or your kids/family put up onto facebook is potentially public – to others. For example if you upload an embarrassing photo and I am not your friend, I wouldn’t normal know about it – however if one of MY friends make a comment on one of your photos (because they are your friends) then I can see that action; and then also see the photo. Be warned!

3. Use your friends list

Friends lists in facebook is not only useful but also important – it essentially allows you to ‘Group’ your friends into different lists. Once you’ve done that you can start to manage them better. To access your Friends  list – hover over the ‘Friends’ menu at the top, and then select ‘All Friends’.

Now you will see all your friends, and to the left side of the screen, you will see you have one list. called ‘Friends’ – which means that everyone is treated the same as your friend.

What you need to do now is start create different lists and places your friends in one or more of those lists. So for example you might have a ‘Friend List’ called, ‘Family’ and another called, ‘Close Friends’ and potentially some like ‘Friends, but never met!’

To create a new list simply click on ‘Create new list’, give it a name and then start selecting which of your friends should be in that list.

For me I have lists such as Family, Close Friends, Friends of Friends, School Friends, and Business Contacts to name a few.

3. Adjust your privacy settings to control who see what

By default in facebook you share all your information, photos, wall posts to all of your friends (and their friends in many cases). This is something that you need to think about carefully. Whilst my family members are indeed my friends (most of the time!) and I am happy to share my embarrassing photos with them – ‘Bob’ who I have never met, nor actually know but is in my friends list – do I really want him to see those photos as well?

So the best way is to change your privacy settings. To do this simply select ‘Privacy Settings’ from under the ‘Settings’ menu on your facebook page.

Then you will want to click on ‘Profile’ to change the privacy settings of who can see various elements of your profile.

Firstly select ‘Profile’ and you will see that you can define who can see your profile. Personally, I would select ‘Friends’ Only’ here.

Now continue down the list selecting different settings for different areas of your profile.

4. Avoid the embarrassing tagged photos

It only takes an embarrassing situation, a camera, Facebook and a ‘tagged image’ and all your friends, family, colleagues and half the world suddenly can laugh at you. Not great at the best at times, but what if the photo that you were tagged in was not actually you? That’s both embarrassing and potentially hurtful.

The best way to protect against this is to restrict which of your ‘friends list’ can see the photos that you have been tagged in. Under ‘Photos Tagged of You’ in your privacy settings, select the option “Only Me” and then “None of My Networks” if you would like to keep all tagged photos private. If you’d like to make tagged photos visible to certain users you can choose to add them in the box under the “Some Friends” option. In the box that displays after you select “Some Friends” you can type either individual friends or friend lists.

I would suggest that you did the same for ‘Video Tagged of You’ to remove the video nastys as well.

5. Protect your photo albums

The previous section only protects photos for which you are tagged in – however what about all the photos that you upload and store in your own albums? Do you really want all those photos shared amongst everyone?

“If anyone called Jason Micheal White, Jason White, James Ryan White, Phil Gibson, Shelly White, Daniel White, Hayley Omalley or Hayley White try to add u, dont accept!! They copy pics of ur kids & sell them to perverts, they’re fake! Please copy paste & inform all ur friends, we need to put a stop to them, police R informed, plz take it seriously .. I’ve been told to pass the message, Please do the same too!” – Taken from a Facebook posting today.

Well, there is a way to protect your photo albums as well. Firstly click on your ‘Profile’ and then  click on ‘See All’. You will then see an option for ‘Album Privacy’;

From here you will be able to select who can and who cannot see each one of your albums.

6. Don’t be afraid to remove friends

Every once in a while take a look at who your friends are – and ask yourself, “Am I still OK with this person seeing what I am doing?”. If not then remove then – or place them in a group that only sees a small amount of your information. It could be an ex-boyfriend or a complete stranger. Nothing feels better than culling a few people off your friends list!

7. Be careful when mixing work and play

If you are like a lot of people you will have both friends, family and work colleagues in your friends list. If you do, then think carefully in what you share. Is your boss, or one of your work colleagues privy to what you are saying? People have been sacked for posting a defamatory comment about their employer on Facebook – or updating their status saying that they are pulling a ‘sicky’!

If you do have work colleagues on your friends list then consider placing them all in a separate friends list (as mentioned above) and restricting what they can and cannot see.

If in any doubt – check it out!

There is a great way to ACTUALLY see what another person can see from your profile on Facebook. Use it to check up on yourself through another’s eye – and use it to check your security settings. To access this gold nugget go back to your Privacy settings page – and at the top there is an option to, “See how a friend sees your profile”.

Enter in one of your friends names and spend a few minutes in their shoes looking at your profile!

Hopefully; if you are like me you have a holiday booked this year then you will no doubt be counting down the days until you leave. What you probably haven’t done (if you are like me!) is booked all the extras and firmed up on the arrangements – they tend to get down in the panic stages prior to departing.  Even if you aren’t counting down the days, but instead shopping around for a break – then don’t forget the extras. Things like travel insurance, airport parking suitcase and other accessories.

So why not take a few moments and get them ticked off now:

Airport Parking

If you are planning on driving to the airport; then always leave you car in the hands of someone that is reputable. After seeing various programs on TV about smaller companies abusing your precious cars after leaving them in their hands – I always head for the large companies to leave me car with. With all the times that I have travelled aboard I have never had any issues.

• One of my favorite companies has to be Holiday Extras who is the UK market leader for airport parking, airport hotels and airport lounges.
• BCP is another inexpensive, convenient and there is a package to suit all needs.
• My final recommendation for Airport Parking is Purple Parking who also cover 50 airports across the UK.

Start your Holiday a day earlier and more relaxed.

• Holiday Extras also do great deals on Airport Hotels - essentially starting you holiday a day early by staying in a hotel close to the airport. Prices also include the cost of leaving your car at the hotel for the duration of the stay and free travel to and from the hotel.

Travelling to and from your destination

Sometimes driving to and from the airport of your destination is not always the most appropriate or wanted trip. Certainly if you spend your whole life driving up and down the country the last way you want to start you holiday is by getting up at the crack of dawn and hitting the motorway! Also many people these days like creating their own holiday package and sometimes forget how they are going to get from their resort airport to their destination. Well here are a few companies that can help.

• Transferstore.com offers taxi, minibus, coach, and limousine transfers between airports and accommodation at low rates and our system is quick and easy to use- just click on the map to get started! You can book return trips or one way going in either direction, up until 3 days before you travel. With rates in the Algarve from £4 and transfers in the Canaries from as little as £3.50 we often have the cheapest rates on the market!
• Holiday Taxis is the UK’s leading provider of pre-bookable airport transfers to 2,000+ resorts and cities worldwide, and now offers a UK transfer service. Private airport taxis, group minibuses, low cost shuttles and limousines are available on our user friendly, secure website.
• A2Btransfers.com provides you with a comprehensive range of international transfers (from Airport Transfers, Harbor Transfers and Resort Transfers) via Taxi, Minibus, Coach and Shuttle Services.
• For those that are travelling by ferry ferrycheap.com offer fantastic fares from all of the UK’s major ports using the top ferry operators like PO Ferries, Eurotunnel, SeaFrance, Speedferries and many more.

Travel Essentials

Lastly; do not forget the essentials that you might need. Have you checked your luggage recently? The last thing you want is to get your case out of the loft the day before travelling and discover only then the rip it developed on the last trip, or the broken latch which may result in your clean underwear being spread across the runway!

• If you are travelling with your kids, and would like a novel (and practical) way to keep them help and quiet on the journey then take a look at www.trunki.com for some great ideas and novel luggage and accessory ideas for kids.
• If you are looking for travel essentials then essentials4travel.com has been providing tasteful travel gear—luggage, laptop cases, travel accessories and travel gadgets—to UK consumers since 2002. Free delivery in the UK from stock on all orders over £19.

Travel Insurance

An obvious one not to forget – and one that needs regular checking is the good-old travel insurance. Just make sure that your trip, activities, wellbeing and possessions are all fully protected and covered.

• Flexicover Ltd are one of the leading online providers of travel insurance in the UK so it would be worth you checking their policies and prices.
• JS Insurance offer the full range of products from single trip travel insurance, annual multi trip travel insurance, ski and snowboard travel insurance as well as travel insurance for European Residents. They also sell other insurance products, such as Computer/PDA Insurance, Mobile Phone Insurance and Car Breakdown Insurance.

In these economic hard times something ‘free’ is never to be sniffed at – so why not grab yourself a free BBQ from any well known shopping market!

Just stay away from the plastic ones as they don’t fair as well!

Nice one Dominos. And who says that virall marketing does not work! I’m just a tad miffed that I only found out about this after the event and after I paid full price for mine the other night. Oh, Well!

Petrol tax rise comes into force

Motorists are now paying an extra 2.12p per litre of petrol as a government fuel tax increase comes into force…

But alas no – this one is indeed true. Petrol taxes are rising again; from today which means that the cost of fuel will rise by over 2p!

I have to ask to the question, “Was this a timely planned release of bad news by the Government?”. Was it some Government minister that decided that they could do some damage limitation by releasing this on a day in which people will believe that everything is untrue. A day when the average man will say,

“Ha! Petrol going up! How silly is that? During a recession! As if! That must be an April Fools, the Government wouldn’t do that! Would they?”

Only when they pull into the forecourt will the realisation hit them (in the wallet) that this little snippet is indeed true!

 BBC NEWS | UK | Petrol tax rise comes into force.

This is a great idea from the labs at Opera – to allow the control of your Opera Browser through the use of face gestures. I am assuminng that in additional to the shown examples if you get up and leave your computer Opera will exit!

via YouTube – Opera Face Gestures.

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